Sierra the beluga whale is lifted from the water and onto a truck at Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ont., on Monday in preparation for travel to a new home at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.Carlos Osorio/The Canadian Press
Jessica Scott-Reid is a Canadian freelance journalist and independent animal advocate. She is also the Disinformation Correspondent for Sentient Media.
For much of the past decade, the trajectory of animal protection in Canada had been fairly clear: forward.
Evidence of this appeared across courtrooms, legislatures and universities. A new centre dedicated to developing alternatives to animal testing opened at the University of Windsor. Parliament moved to restrict some of Canada’s most controversial uses of animals, including keeping whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity. Political leaders pledged to end the live export of horses for slaughter. And an Ontario court recognized the public interest in exposing what happens behind the closed doors of factory farms.
From a distance, it looked like progress. It looked like aging systems were gradually becoming more transparent, more compassionate and more aligned with Canadian values. Of course, evolution in this area rarely moves in a straight line. Victories are followed by setbacks, and reforms by resistance; one hop forward, two trots back are to be expected. But today, something is changing, and not for the better. Animal protection progress in Canada is not just ebbing; it’s making a U-turn.
A decade ago, there was reason for optimism. The Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods (CCAAM) was established in 2017, marking a meaningful moment for Canadian science and ethics. The centre’s mandate reflected an emerging consensus that testing on animals is not only ethically contested but becoming increasingly scientifically outdated. Human-relevant (rather than mouse-relevant) methods utilizing biotechnologies such as organ on a chip and disease in a dish were not just theoretical replacement ideas – they were real. And they were being developed around the world, including in Britain, the European Union, the U.S. and Asia, to prioritize human-based biology to cure, treat and prevent human diseases and harms.
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The CCAAM was meant to accelerate that transition for Canada, positioning our country alongside those other jurisdictions investing heavily in next-generation science. And for a time, it did, with the support of private donors and grants.
“When CCAAM opened, Canada finally had a distinct voice in a global conversation that had been happening without us for decades,” recalls the centre’s executive director, Dr. Charu Chandrasekara. “It was surreal to watch my back-of-the-napkin idea swiftly grow into a national centre that united government, industry, academia, and animal advocates around an unprecedented vision to reimagine Canada’s animal-testing landscape.”
Around the time that CCAAM was busy shifting paradigms in scientific research, change was also occurring elsewhere, as politicians across Canada appeared increasingly willing to question long-standing systems of animal use, in laboratories, farming and entertainment.
Protesters call for the end to the practice of exporting live horses from Canada during a demonstration outside a Liberal party caucus meeting in Edmonton in September, 2025.AMBER BRACKEN/The Canadian Press
In 2019, when more than 60 cetaceans were being held captive in Canadian facilities, Parliament passed a federal ban on breeding and keeping new whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity. The move was widely celebrated as a turning point in Canadian animal policy – a “watershed moment,” as Camille Labchuk, executive director of Canadian animal law organization Animal Justice, said in a statement at the time. She described the law, which Animal Justice helped campaign for, as “powerful recognition that our country no longer accepts imprisoning smart, sensitive animals in tiny tanks for entertainment.” Indeed, public opinion was changing. A 2018 Angus Reid poll found Canadians were more than twice as likely to support banning whale and dolphin captivity than allowing it. This prompted Ms. Labchuk to declare “the tide is finally turning for animals in Canada.”
And within just days, yet another animal-centred bill passed into law, this time banning the importation of shark fin – commonly used in shark fin soup – into Canada. The move aligned with growing international agreement that the practice of hacking fins off the crucial apex predators, often leaving them to helplessly sink and drown, was both environmentally destructive and ethically indefensible.
“It felt like we were finally breaking through,” Ms. Labchuk recently recalled. “We won hard-fought battles to pass the first serious new federal animal cruelty laws in over 100 years. Parliament was listening to the voices of compassionate Canadians.” At the time she was “incredibly optimistic,” she told me, “that we would see even more progress to end animal cruelty in the years to come.”
Canada no longer allows shark fins to be imported, thanks to a win for animal-rights activists in the late 2010s. Here, shark fins sit on a tarp outside a shop in Hong Kong.ISAAC LAWRENCE/AFP/Getty Images
These were not just minor regulatory changes. They were powerful public signals of an advancing moral direction. And that advancement carried on, further fortified by a monumental move in Montreal. After years of debate over the welfare of horses pulling tourists through traffic and across Old Montreal’s cobblestone streets, the city’s infamous horse-drawn carriage industry came to an end on Jan. 1, 2020, under then-mayor Valérie Plante. Working with the Montreal SPCA, the city helped retire those former carriage horses to adoptive homes and horse sanctuaries, marking the end of one of Canada’s oldest forms of animal exploitation, and reflecting changing public expectations about how we should be treating animals.
Horses became a type of litmus test for animal protection reform in Canada, as activism was also increasing around the issue of live horse export. According to government data compiled by advocates, Canada exported more than 1,600 live horses in 2020 alone, on gruelling long-haul flights to Japan to be slaughtered for sashimi – a practice that has been going on since the early 2000s. That year, Canadian singer and actor Jann Arden joined the efforts to increase public awareness and to call on the federal government to ban the trade. “We can hear some very beautiful horses … kicking in crates already,” she told Global News that year, while witnessing horses being loaded up. “They haven’t even left the Calgary airport yet. They’ve got two days in turbulence on an aircraft. No food. No water. Not knowing what the hell is happening – and a very unhappy ending.”
The added attention bolstered years of advocacy, and in 2021, then prime minister Justin Trudeau pledged to end Canada’s export of live horses for slaughter as part of the Liberal platform. Upon winning, he then mandated the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to get it done.
By this point, a variety of animal protection concerns were commanding attention at various levels of government. In 2023, Mr. Trudeau’s federal government then passed landmark amendments aimed at reducing reliance on animal testing. Bill S-5 prohibited some cosmetic animal testing and required the development of a federal strategy to replace, reduce and refine vertebrate animal testing, and to advance the use of non-animal alternatives. Dr. Chandrasekera called it “the icing on the cake,” transforming momentum into national policy.
As wins for animals were stacking up, animal activism was also ramping up. With the help of smartphones and social media, activists, investigators and whistleblowers were becoming increasingly empowered to expose the conditions of captive animals, including those horses crammed into crates at Canadian airports, as well livestock in transport trucks, on farms and in slaughterhouses. Undercover investigations showcasing both illegal animal cruelty and shocking standard practices were making the evening news. Activist footage and livestreams from inside factory farms were being shared across social media. Some farm workers and owners were being charged. And the public was learning the truth.
A protester occupies a barn at Excelsior Hog Farm in Abbotsford, B.C., in April, 2019.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Then the industry reacted, lobbying the government for help.
While legislative lineage from Iowa to Alberta is easier to trace than from Iowa to Ontario, the same concept that emerged in America to curb investigations of factory farms then took root in both provinces, as well as in Manitoba and Prince Edward Island. What are known as agriculture-gag laws have been implemented to deter investigators, activists, whistleblowers and journalists from entering and documenting farming spaces by imposing massive fines, and in some cases jail time.
Once again though, animal advocates pressed on. In Ontario, the Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act was challenged in court by Animal Justice, along with activist Louise Jorgenson, and me, a journalist who covers animal rights and welfare. Again, we saw success for the animals, as well as for free expression, after an Ontario judge deemed portions of the law unconstitutional in 2024. The ruling struck down restrictions on undercover investigations and whistle-blowing, preserving those key channels for informing the public about conditions inside farms and slaughterhouses.
But then something changed. Broader cultural and political shifts across North America were increasingly turning debates around meat, farming and environmental protection into partisan battlegrounds. Animal protection – once an issue usually capable of building broad consensus – seemed to get caught up in the culture-war crossfire. Momentum stalled.
But that stagnation wasn’t exclusive to farm animals. In fact, while support for replacing animals in experimentation was actually growing in the United States, up here the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods was shutting its doors owing to lack of funding. While similar centres in other G7 nations receive government funding to carry out the important work of “thinking outside the cage,” as Dr. Chandrasekera often puts it, the Canadian government declined to provide support – even as Ontario prohibited the use of dogs and cats in government-funded research. “Canada has the legislation and the national strategy, but no national infrastructure to bring either to life,” Dr. Chandrasekera told me. Today, her laboratory equipment sits in a storage unit, and Canada continues to use more than 3.7 million animals in testing, research and education annually.
The political habit of creating road maps without providing gas money has also made victims out of many of Canada’s captive wildlife. Since the so-called “Free Willy Bill” passed seven years ago, at least 20 captive cetaceans have died in Canada – 19 belugas and Kiska, an orca. Advocates say the government should be providing funding for the development of a marine sanctuary off Canada’s east coast that would allow for long-term rehabilitation and retirement of surviving whales. But that’s not happening. Rather, the remaining belugas at the now-shuttered Marineland have since been approved for transfer to entertainment facilities in Spain and the United States. This week, six of those belugas were loaded up into cargo containers bound for facilities in the U.S., including SeaWorld in San Antonio, Tex.
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Also set for export are more Canadian horses, to Japan for slaughter – most recently documented on June 15. While the United States moves toward bipartisan legislation to end the export of horses for slaughter to Canada and Mexico (after essentially banning horse slaughter nearly two decades ago), Canada continues to allow both the slaughter of horses and their export abroad. Conservative pushback and a change in national Liberal leadership put the ban on live export basically to bed, tucked in by industry arguments that the trade is legal, regulated and profitable. Today, Canada remains one of the top producers of horse meat in the world.
A horse-drawn carriage in Victoria in 2016. While Montreal banned this use of horses in 2020, the B.C. capital’s city council has rejected opportunities to do something similar.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
Arguments prioritizing profits and regulations are also used to keep the horse carriage industry alive in Canada, most notably in Victoria. Despite the ban in Montreal, and despite multiple documented incidents over the past decade in B.C.’s capital of horses being injured, spooked or collapsing, city council continues to side with industry, opting for more regulations rather than much-deserved retirement.
Industry over animals continues to show up as a political preference in 2026. After the Ontario government appealed the lower court’s decision that had struck down parts of its ag-gag legislation as unconstitutional, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in the government’s favour last month. Ag-gag laws now remain in full force in the province, allowing the animal-farming industry to operate with legal protections from undercover investigations and to keep conditions of animals on farms largely shielded from media coverage and public scrutiny.
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“The court decided to draw the line exactly where the government did – on the side of meat industry profits, not animal protection and transparency,” said Ms. Labchuk. “It’s a dark day for animals and free speech in Canada that the public is now blocked from seeing what happens to animals in farms and slaughterhouses. Meanwhile, there are still no animal welfare laws to protect animals who live their entire lives caged inside dingy, filthy barns.” She called it “a moral atrocity, but a reflection of the immense lobbying power of the meat, dairy and egg industries.”
What we see across all of these stories is advancement without action, leading to regression. Commitments are made, laws are passed, but follow-through, funding and enforcement are missing in action. “We’ve gone from real momentum and progress, to watching promises get buried and courts siding with industries rather than basic decency for animals,” said Ms. Labchuk.
She told me that it all “feels much bleaker than it once did,” as “the gap between government action and public expectations for animal welfare keeps growing.”
Canadians care about animals. We care about progress and about the values that make Canada a compassionate country. These are things many of us vote for, things we expect some of our taxes to pay for, and what we want our leaders to push for. After nearly a decade of hope and hard-won advances, today Canada is failing animals. The way things are going, we can only hope that shark fin doesn’t end up back on the menu.